Canonical representatives for divisor classes on tropical curves and the matrix-tree theorem

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Abstract: Let Gamma be a compact tropical curve (or metric graph) of genus g. Using the theory of tropical theta functions, Mikhalkin and Zharkov proved that there is a canonical effective representative (called a break divisor) for each linear equivalence class of divisors of degree g on Gamma. We present a new combinatorial proof of the fact that there is a unique break divisor in each equivalence class, establishing in the process an "integral" version of this result which is of independent interest. As an application, we provide a "geometric proof" of (a dual version of) Kirchhoff's celebrated Matrix-Tree Theorem. Indeed, we show that each weighted graph model G for Gamma gives rise to a canonical polyhedral decomposition of the g-dimensional real torus mPicg(Gamma) into parallelotopes CT, one for each spanning tree T of G, and the dual Kirchhoff theorem becomes the statement that the volume of mPicg(Gamma) is the sum of the volumes of the cells in the decomposition.





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